


Found Families

by gildthelilli



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angsty Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale still has faith in god even if he has little faith in the bureaucracy of heaven, Crowley is a Softie, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, The husbands adopt a pet, animal death mention, fluff to minor angst to fluff again, i guess??, their relationship is vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21520342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildthelilli/pseuds/gildthelilli
Summary: Crowley finds an orphaned kitten. Crowley is the softie who wants to keep it, Aziraphale isn’t having it. Crowley works through some trauma in the meantime.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	Found Families

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AngelcatWish3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelcatWish3/gifts).



> This started as a twitter message to my friend and accidentally grew into a fic lol so it's up to you to judge the quality. I never intended for it to be anything more than the bit of dialogue at the start that danced around the concept of "Lol what if Crowley has to tempt zira into letting him get a pet because Aziraphale is the hardass and Crowley is the softie who fell in love with a stray kitten" but apparently it grew into a story and I went just a little darker than intended. Enjoy.

"Crowley we are NOT keeping it,” huffed the angel as he bustled past Crowley, arms full of books.

Aziraphale had told Crowley upon arrival that he was currently in the process of re-organising the entire shop, as the patrons had begun to figure out his current system of ranking books by the number of times the letter “I” appeared in them. ‘Why do they have to be so clever at moments when it is least convenient?’ Aziraphale had lamented before looking down to see Crowley had something sheltered in his coat, and here they were. Only Crowley was beginning to run out of juice in the argument department.

"Why not? Human bookshops have cats in them."

Crowley knew that much. What he didn’t remember was why humans liked bookshop cats in the first place, but he had to come up with it soon.

"Yes that's what I'm worried about,” said Aziraphale darkly. “If a cat appears in the shop, customers will want to stay and coo over it. Crowley they will want to spend time here! I can't have it hanging around and causing book sales!"

Crowley watched as Aziraphale pull yet another shelf of books down before he started to wander about and rehome them, seemingly at random. The angel was about to shelve a first edition cookbook from the 14th century amongst some old pulp romance novels from the 50, when-

"Pests!” shouted Crowley in triumph.

“What about pests?”

“They have cats to stop mice from getting at the books,”

"Absolutely not. It will make a mess. Hair and toys and… leavings.”

“Oh well then it would be a shame if a plague of mice would happen to appear,” said Crowley as he circled Aziraphale, “and there was no cat here to defend you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Aziraphale and Crowley knew that was an order and the end of that discussion. “Besides, don't snakes eat mice?"

"Not this snake," said Crowley, repulsed. Not even if it was served on a silver platter with dill sauce at the Ritz.

Aziraphale was about to shelve another book when something seemed to strike him. "Crowley, Where is its mother?"

Crowley was smacked over the head with flashbacks of a speeding Bentley, the observation of a black blur running onto the road moments too late, the sound of a thump on the car’s grill.

"... Not important, point is that it's an orphan and we can't just throw it out on the street! It can't fend for itself! It has no one, angel, and now it's alone and hurt and has no mother and no family because its mother is gone because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people."

Ah.

Aziraphale softened and really looked at the cat for the first time, which was now squirming in Crowley's slender hands. It had been trying to escape throughout the whole conversation, crawling out of his jacket then attempting to get over his shoulder. Crowley had been doing a kind of kitten juggling act to keep it from escaping. The kitten in question was a tortoiseshell. dark ash grey with black and red dispersed through its coat. Two sets of big yellow slitted eyes stared back at the angel, who sighed as he miracled a bowl of water out of thin air and grabbed his newspaper from the coffee table.

* * *

Later that evening, an angel and a demon were sitting together on the sofa. Well, "Sitting" is a generous word for what Crowley does, as "sitting" doesn't usually involve having each limb arranged to point in a different cardinal direction while draped diagonally on a sofa. "Sitting" usually doesn't involve much leaning on a certain angel, either. But "sitting" is what we will call it, as "sort of cuddling while pretending to lounge" would elicit protest and vitriol from this demon who is desperate to keep his pride intact, despite hanging fact his hand is hanging off the sofa with wiggly fingers for his tiny kitten to play with. He is preparing it to hunt mice and is absolutely not just enchanted with the feeling of watching tiny paws bat at his fingertips, because that wouldn’t be very demonic. They’ve been like this for the better part of an hour, their nightly routine only altered by the addition of tiny “mews” coming from the floor. Aziraphale had his nose in a book, as usual, but when Crowley felt a hand give his arm a gentle squeeze he realised by the complicated expression on Aziraphale’s face that he had probably been just staring at the same page for a while now.

Aziraphale turned his gaze down to Crowley in his lap, hesitating. "She loves you, Crowley. Loves us."

Crowley’s hand stopped moving. He stared forward.

"I really believe that much," continued Aziraphale gently. "You have suffered more cruelty by Her hand. I don't expect you to forgive Her”

“Angel-”

“No, let me say this, dearest. You need to realise Her love can’t be changed or canceled out by office politics. And if you truly believe you were rejected, in some small way that plan worked out for the best despite all you went through, because if this hadn’t happened you’d be up there being bossed around by Gabriel and Michael and making everyone’s lives more miserable.”

“Bloody wankers,” Crowley said, loosening a bit.

Aziraphale smiled, letting the curse go, and began to run his fingers through Crowley’s hair. He relaxed into it, and every now and then Aziraphale would hit a spot at the base of his skull that sent tingles to the base of his spine. Crowley dragged his hand along the floor until the kitten pounced on him, claws drawn.

“I can never know that pain, dear. I won’t insult you by pretending I understand the frankly suffering She inflicts. But in that rejection, you found a family. You found a family, Crowley. And it never could have been found in any ring of Heaven or circle of Hell, or in any prayer to Her. You were the one who created a family for me to choose when the time came for me to reject them "

Crowley felt so much and yet in that moment could think of so little. It was lucky he didn’t really need to breathe or else he might have been going purple. How do you even begin with that? 6000 years of trauma doesn’t melt away with one “by the way, God loves you.” But when he gazed up at the angel he could see a familiar expression. An expression that came after a bombing and some rescued books, after a miracled stain, after a toast at the Ritz. So instead, his response was to reach down onto the floor and scoop up the tiny bundle of sooty fur and hold it close to his chest, while pulling the Angel closer with his other; Aziraphale running his fingers through Crowley’s hair, who in turn stroked his kitten’s tiny head until they both fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr @ angelsdineattheritz  
> ineffable art ig @gildthelilli


End file.
